Women in Parched Bundelkhand Villages are Pioneering Water Conservation Efforts

In the village Agrotha, Chatarpur, Madhya Pradesh, women were travelling up to 2.5 kilometres to fetch water. Natural water resources had depleted, and the village’s only pond remained dry for most of the year. Access to the little water that remained was determined by caste. Dalit women recount water tankers being deliberately polluted with cow dung to prevent them from using it. Parmarth Samaj Sevi Sansthan, a non-profit organisation working with vulnerable communities, trained Agrotha’s women to become Jal Sahelis, or friends of water. Through collective decision-making, they diverted rainwater from forested mountains into the village pond and dammed its flow, thereby increasing the quantity of water available for irrigation. They have since planted kitchen gardens, and constructed soak pits and check dams, together providing 10 billion litres of water to 2,256 hectares of land. However, the film does not let the scale of this achievement flatten the caste-based violence that prompted it. Women like Babli Adivasi have been elected to Gram Panchayats and district municipalities, but a more telling moment arrives when Kiran, a Dalit Jal Saheli, is interrupted mid-testimony about her own discrimination. Her interviewer intervenes to ask the interrupter to let her speak. An exasperated Kiran looks off camera, waiting for a moment when she is not talked over.